Posted
by
samzenpus
on Friday August 17, 2012 @02:07AM
from the how's-my-driving dept.

Qedward writes "Motorists are being invited to help develop a new driving app that could earn them a discount of 'up to 20%' on their motor insurance. British insurer Aviva is using smartphone technology to create individual driver profiles that will be used to calculate tailored pay-how-you-drive premiums. The driver behavioral app, Aviva RateMyDrive, will monitor motorists taking part in the test for 200 miles, including acceleration, braking and cornering. This data is then turned into an individual score which helps determine the motorist's premium, with 'safer' drivers earning up to 20% off their deal."

Besides the fact that this is begging to be gamed, how to they tell the difference between someone driving carefully and some half-blind octogenarian that's causing traffic accidents around them by driving too slow and failing to react to near-misses that may affect the next driver?

The insurance company incentivises people to provide very detailed information about themselves, that they would normally never provide, and may even try to prevent being obtained.

In the process, they build a precedent that will penalize people that are unwilling to provide this data willingly.

EG, it starts out as "If I voluntarily join this program, I could say 20% on my insurance." It then later becomes the "New standard rate metric, based on your personal driving patterns," and eventually becomes "Penalized rate for not providing data on your traffic patterns."

While it looks good now, it wont look so good to people who value their privacy in the future. They will be lumped in with people who are clearly bad drivers but dont want to admit it, and want to hide that fact from the insurance companies.

They certainly won't share their methods of interpreting the driving data, so it would be an easy excuse to charge you more money. "Mr. Mahoney, according to your driving data you will be charged a 5% premium over the standard rate. Better luck next time."

It's interesting but if they aren't correlating the data with red lights, traffic signs, and impact on other drivers, it's of limited use. Unless you're one of those people who habitually drive 50 over the speed limit.

How is that different to anything else? First class transport led to a decrease in the quality of economy transport (along with a drop in price).

Insurance is based on transferring a large personal risk to another entity at a cost you can afford. In the UK the insurance market is very competitive, there are hundreds of suppliers. If it works out that a young new driver can get insurance for £1,600 rather than £2,000 if they are willing to provide more information. If someone is willing to make

EG, it starts out as "If I voluntarily join this program, I could say 20% on my insurance." It then later becomes the "New standard rate metric, based on your personal driving patterns," and eventually becomes "Penalized rate for not providing data on your traffic patterns."

Sounds all too familiar to those living in the Chicago area. While the tollways were being updated to new open-road tolling (i.e. you don't need to stop at a booth), everyone was told that those who had an iPass (the electronic toll device) would receive a discount. Of course the discount turned into: those with iPass pay the same (high) cost as before and everyone using cash pays double.

but imagine for a moment that everybody just stopped buying insurance, canceled their insurance completely and drove without it.

Within a short time the automated license plate scanners would be connected to an insurance monitoring system and an automated fine-sending system. What, do you think the appropriate hooks aren't there yet?

If millions of people break the law, it's not a law. Basically laws are relying on voluntary compliance. For profit prisons are the only correct way to have prisons, but that's because there should be no government laws that put people to jail. The court system, the prison system, the policing, all of this should be private. The prison time should be paid by liability insurance and thieves shouldn't even be in prison, they should be forced to return the value of what they stole maybe multiplied by 3.

"If millions of people break the law, it's not a law"Wrong, It's still a law. In fact, it's now a law with so many people breaking it, law enforcement can get away with cherry picking who gets arrested for breaking it.

" I want you to be working for me until you pay it back more than once."Great, now people who are arrested will become defacto slaves. What could possibly go wrong? I'm sure groups of people wont get together and lie so they can get free slaves~

AFAIC if you steal from me, I don't want you in prison, I want you to be working for me until you pay it back more than once.

So in your hypothetical perfect world, the thief basically becomes a slave of the person he stole from until they can compensate the damage?

Okay, then. I wonder about the specifics. Like, when he's working for me, I'm the one setting the price of labor, right? And I know you're against minimum wage laws - so can I set it to, say, 1 cent per hour? Also, what about work time and conditions? I mean, the guy could be some slacker who refuses to work for me more than an hour every day, surely that's wrong? So can I force them to work every single moment they are awake until the debt is paid out?

I wonder, would you permit "selling" them, too? I mean, you can sell someone's debt to you today, logically this is quite similar. So if someone steals my car and they don't have insurance to pay for it, can I sell their debt (i.e. their obligation to work for me - effectively, my rights to them as a slave) to, say, some mining company? I just don't have anything that needs to be done requiring such copious amounts of manual labor, but clearly I should have some financial recourse, right?

Finally, I can't help but wonder what happens if my slave has a child. If all their wages are garnished to repay the debt, clearly they can't afford to so much as feed them. I would be quite eager to let them retain part of their earnings for themselves for those purposes, but only under certain conditions, like, say, requiring that the child in question also enters into a lifetime contract with me under similar terms to compensate for my lost repayments. This is obviously a valid arrangement, but do I only need the agreement of the kid, or must his parents also assent?

Please learn some fucking history. Private jails and courts have ALWAYS been used by the powerful to indenture everyone else. ALWAYS.

We are seeing the problem with this in America, right now.Who created 3 strikes laws? Private companies who own prisons.Who keeps pushing longer sentences? Private companies who own prisons.Who pushes for more arrests in poor neighborhoods? Private prisons.

Yes, private security force may be hired and you may end up in prison and your property may end up being leaned and seized to pay for the decontamination and other costs."and since it will be a private court, you will always be found guilty.

"government does today that would be anywhere near as efficient "The US government is far more efficient then people think. Have you read the account reports? budgets? I have, for government and private sectors. The US government is many times more efficient in most cases.Compared to almost every other government? more efficient, and far more honest.

Maybe you should learn about the system before talking about it? no, no just keep being stupid.

" What did government do with BP spill? What, the 75 Million USD per incident liability limit? How did that help anybody?"And not having a government BP would have done more? Or do you think the people would have more power and money then BP?BTW, BP paid 45 BILLION, not 75 million.

This is a private property issue, nothing to do with government. If you are causing pollution to OTHER people's property and possibly even causing harm to other people's health, not yours, that's your problem, other people. Then it is up to those other people to sue you, that's all.

Since you're on slashdot I'll assume, perhaps mistakenly, that you're not stupid, but simply young (unlike that old rich Libertarian liar you've been listening to). If pollution could be stopped by lawsuits, the Clean Air Act and

Government gives the companies green light to pollute on these so called 'public properties', which shouldn't exist in the first place, and if they do exist, no business can be allowed to do anything there.

So barges should be banned from rivers? Do you have any idea how much more everything would cost, especially food, if barges weren't allowed on the Mississippi or the Great lakes? Rivers were America's first highways, and for a long time its only highways.

There is no eventually about it. In the UK we already have a database of all vehicle license plates which is linked to data on which cars have insurance cover provided by the insurance industry. A few years ago it was made a legal requirement to make a declaration [direct.gov.uk] to the vehicle licensing authority if your car is "off the road", i.e. not being used on a public highway and therefore not requiring insurance.

There is already a list of the registered car owners without insurance (and also without having paid

This is a problem of-course, because eventually the cops will have the license plate recognition systems that are tied into insurance databases and all the other databases and it will be nearly impossible to drive without insurance, but imagine for a moment that everybody just stopped buying insurance, cancelled their insurance completely and drove without it.

Here in the UK we are already there, they are fitting ANPR systems into most police cars already. They are tied into the motor insurance database already. If you are driving a car without insurance it bleeps at them and they pull you over. Once they pull you over you can then tell them your insurance company and they ring them up and check, tell them your name and they look that up and check or they take your car there and then.

You then have a couple of weeks to collect your car (and pay the tow charges) be

If a person doesn't have insurance it does not mean he cannot pay for the problems if he causes the problems on the road. What if you don't want to give up your income to an insurance company, instead you have your savings that you can tap into in case of an emergency?

Because the risk is unbounded. You might believe you have enough money to buy a new car for someone when your mistake totals their car. But what if you cause someone permanent handicap such that they need care and treatment for the rest of their lives. What if you handicap a bus load of people? What if you cause a train disaster? Then you're into many millions. Few people could afford to pay the cost of the harm they caused, and no-one would know whether they could or not until after the incident.

Are you really that stupid? What if the other party is a pedestrian, or a passenger in a vehicle they don't own, or is standing at a bus stop or sitting at a sidewalk cafe? What you are in effect saying is that instead of you, the owner of a vehicle that can cause untold damage, being forced to have insurance to protect us from you, everyone else should have to have insurance to protect themselves from you.

You are mistaken, just like this guy, and my reply to him is the same as it is to you. Your insurance is there to cover you, not anybody else.

I'm not mistaken about anything. The topic of who's liability is covered wasn't part of my post. My post was regarding the fact that mandatory third party liability insurance is there to ensure that you can afford to pay when your errors when driving a car cause harm to others.

And in my country at least, the injured party does not sue you. It is you legal duty to provide your insurance details to the other person whenever you are involved in a road traffic accident, and they do indeed claim directly from your insurance. You do not have the option to personally refuse to pay for example. The insurance company pays them directly, not you.

It is your personal responsibility to cover yourself with enough insurance so that if something happens to you, you do not have to worry about paying for your bills and such.

It's more than your personal responsibility. it's your legal duty. The law is there to protect people from idiots that think they don't need insurance, and who then are not able to pay when they cause harm to others.

Your attitude to perfectly reasonable rules of law is more than a little cranky. Fraud? You're nuts.

Well, it's government, it is not supposed to be efficient or intelligent. It's about punishment, show of force, showing you who is the boss, telling you to go stuff it, showing you that they can crash you (or your car).

Never understood this. Why crush the car? Why not sell it? Change the locks if necessary, but it's not like the car is being punished here.

Because most of the time the people who drive without insurance drive around in pieces of crap that nobody would pay for.

Legally though I believe they can sell the car if they think it is worth anything. But who would be stupid enough to pay up for a nice new car then not pay a few hundred quid to insure it? Most new cars come with free insurance anyway over here.

> Driving without insurance in the UK will get your car seized and crushed.

Maybe Britain is radically different from the US in this regard, but I'd be shocked if any such law weren't written in a way that made it impossible to actually DO that to any car that was secured by a bank loan, as opposed to a car that was paid off and driven by an uninsured owner. At the *very* least, the law would be written with "safe harbor" provisions that exempted any car used to secure a loan as long as the lender made a

Mass civil disobedience happens when people really care about something enough to put their own liberty and property in danger. People don't care that much about their insurance company lowering their premiums in exchange for monitoring their driving behaviour, in fact, most good drivers are going to welcome this (and everyone thinks they're a good driver).

No, sure, people don't react and don't do anything because they are the proverbial frog that is being slowly cooked in a pan, not thrown into boiling hot water, they are boiled slowly.

However there will be a breaking point, I believe that breaking point is going to hit when the next economic crisis happens, so when the dollar crashes, the US bonds crash. But the unfortunate part is that if the people did try to get out of that pan right now, it would mean much less blood, less senseless violence. It's not

No. Most driver are bad driver 90% of the time.We didn't evolve any real mechanism for being in a box hurtling down a road at 50 miles an hour. Most people, most of the time, aren't really paying attention. Not paying attention is what causes most auto accident.

You won't have all car owners behind you. Speaking as somone who was hit by a moron who didn't have insurance, I was glad I did, so I wouldn't have to re-purchase my totaled brand new car because the moron wanted to text his girlfriend as he was driving.

Lots of us understand what insurance is for and want it. If you have a piece-of crap car, and no savings the person who you carelessly wreck into can go after to recover damages, sure, I'm sure you don't want to pay for insurance.

Yes, let's just conveniently ignore little realities like the fact that the people most likely to not have insurance (especially if not mandated) are the ones who can not afford to pay for damage they cause.

how to they tell the difference between someone driving carefully and some half-blind octogenarian that's causing traffic accidents around them by driving too slow... ?

Correlating speed to position and a database of speed limits will tell you if people are driving too fast or too slow. (In certain cases, driving slower than the speed limit is the correct action, so you'd have to look at a large dataset to differentiate between those who adapt to circumstances and those who always drive to slow.)

In general, slow drivers aren't a problem for insurance companies. If you drive slowly and another car gets into an accident while trying to overtake, it's typically his insurace that will have to pay, because he should have waited until it was safe to pass.

I suspect they are trying to weed out the young drivers who have never been in a near-accident and believe that they can drive 20 mph over the speed limit, because they have such a good car, and their reactions are so much better than other people's. If they can eliminate that subset of drivers, they wouldn't have to have such high premiums for young people in general.

The UK insurance industry has a huge problem with bogus whiplash claims - the slightest little bump and lawyers are pushing for thousands of pounds in compensation for a medical condition which doctors admit is almost impossible to prove either way. This has lead to a fivefold increase in some insurance costs over the last fifteen years. Schemes like this, and others where rolling camera footage is stored, are an attempt to show that these low speed collisions are generating claims far beyond what is reasonable.

In general, slow drivers aren't a problem for insurance companies. If you drive slowly and another car gets into an accident while trying to overtake, it's typically his insurace that will have to pay, because he should have waited until it was safe to pass.

The main problem I have in traffic are people who turn onto a road, and then refuse to step on it, presumably because they think acceleration is dangerous. (Then, of course, the idiots slowly creep up to 10 above the speed limit, because they don't think speed is dangerous.)

So when someone pulls out in front of them and refuses to get up to speed, someone doing the speed limit in a heavy vehicle has to step on the brakes and do evasive maneuvers to avoid rear-ending them.

I could guess, but until we see the actual algorithms they use (i.e. never) that's all it would be. Insurance companies tend to have pretty good data on what kind of behaviour gets you involved in accidents, so I wouldn't be so quick to assume they'll be idiots about it.

Let's examine their motivation for a moment...They want to raise the premium for those that lodge a lot of insurance claims. I.e. those that get into a lot of accidents. Granted they SAY the opposite - that they want to lower the premiums fo

We studied it as part of a project during my CompSci course about the time it was launched.

Essentially you agree that they put a GPS tracker in your car. It monitors your speed/acceleration/braking/etc (just like the app). You then only pay insurance for when you are driving, and the price is affected by how well you drive. It's been around for some time now. It's fixed to your car, and if you remove it from your car so they don't see your bad driving you're illegally driving without insurance.

All the phone app is is a free trial of that type of insurance - far cheaper to give them an app than send them a tracker. If you were to actually buy their insurance there's no way they'd let you keep using the phone app for it. Too much chance of forgetting the phone or battery dying, let alone any 'gaming'.

Knowing what the insurance companies have determined is statistically higher accident risk behavior would help teach better driving methods.

I do all sorts of stuff that's a little different than what most people do to minimize accident risk. Over a lifetime of driving, it has apparently worked well for reducing accidents. (I had one, within the first year of driving when I still didn't know what I was doing. That was 18 years ago.)

For example, I stay way back from the wide white line at intersections, the more traffic or faster the cross traffic is the farther back I stay. There is NO REASON to get up close unless turning right. All that does is set up a situation where an accident in the intersection could push cars into mine. The extra 10 feet doesn't matter for starting up again when the light turns green.

In some cases it also makes the sensors work. Here in the Netherlands most traffic lights detect whether there is a car waiting on the light. Most of these sensors are within 2 meters (6 feet) from the white line. If you keep 3,3 meters (10 feet) of distance then it will not notice you and thus it will not turn green.

Octogenarians don't tend to have smart phones or install apps for insurance quotes. Also, even if it could be gamed, the basic question from the insurer's point of view is do they make more money from providing the app or not? Even if we assume x% of people somehow manage to con the app, does the remainder who use it in good faith allow the insurer to more accurately calculate risk and therefore the quotes it offers? If the answer is yes then it's clear why they may do it. The easiest way to game the app of

how to they tell the difference between someone driving carefully and some half-blind octogenarian that's causing traffic accidents around them by driving too slow

Statistically speaking, anyone who is regularly causing traffic crashes around them is highly likely to be involved in one or more of those crashes. It is the nature of being a reckless driver that, sooner or later, you will be in a crash.

Aviva is a huge business (sixth-largest insurance company in the world) - they employ some of the best actuaries in the world to figure out their risk models. They are going to be studying the statistics of driver behaviour in detail and will surely come up with more tha

I'm not too sure this is a universally good idea. Sometimes traffic gives you a tricky situation and you need to accelerate or do a quick lane change to avoid a potential accident. In those moments I'm not too sure it's good to introduce the thought, "Oh, but wait, that may increase my premium".

Indeed sometimes. That sometimes you have to act will show abnormal in the data. If that sometimes becomes often and thus a pattern, either change your route (or timing) to a safer one or be come a better driver by anticipating more if you thing those anomalies in the data weren't your fault in the first place.

I can't help but think of the time I was in Vegas at a blackjack table. The gal next to me was asking the dealer what this "Insurance" thing was written on the table. He answered, "Well, if it's advertised on the table, by the casino, do you think it's good for you, or good for them?"

False comparison. This is actually a potential benefit for both parties.

The insurer wins as there should be a reduced number of claims, resulting in reduced staff numbers required and lower payouts for claims.

The driver wins as they get a lower premium.

The rest of us lose out as we'll now get stuck behind slow cocks that don't dare accelerate away from junctions, adding to overall congestion and causing accidents for others as a result. But that doesn't make it a bad choice for the insured driver.

Where all of this breaks down is that such a journey would cost me Â£25 in diesel, and that's well over 10% of my annual car insurance premium. Given that Aviva are around 15% more expensive than my current insurer, I'm better off just not bothering.

A 20% discount just doesn't justify the time, effort and (since they'll never stop at 200 miles, within a year it'll be ten times that) intrusion.

I don't think that this application is for you, an experienced driver with a £250 annual insurance premium.

This app is for younger drivers with >£1000 insurance premiums, where £20 of fuel is worth it to save £200. That's if they can stop themselves cruising down the motorway at 100mph at 2am because the road is so empty. Note that these young drivers will be in older, cheaper cars without cruise control too.

The only way around it is for the device to either mark down late night

Tired of paying those high insurance premiums? Don't want to waste your own time and gas money to game the insurance system with your phone being driven very carefully for miles and miles on end? Well, now you can have your insurance premiums lowered for a low fee of 10 bucks per month, we'll drive your phone around, as we collect the phones of all the other folks who are taking advantage of our great deal and low rates.

This is another thin end of the wedge situation. For now it's an optional 200 mile sample. Then it'll be permanantly on. Then having this will be a condition of your insurance...
Remember that as this is a smartphone app location data will also be captured. Do you really want your insurer knowing everywhere you go? How long before the Police demand that data to track where someone's been?
OBdisclaimer - I work for an insurance company and I'm extremely uneasy about this.

You can bet that their programmers wrote in the conclusion of their presentation to management: "With more data, the test becomes more accurate."So, when they will do the test again next year (they will, don't worry), it will include more data. Did you know that statistics say that secondary roads are more dangerous than highways?

Wonder how they would rate me if I took the bus to work for a week? Certainly wouldn't catch me speeding or accelerating/decelerating too hard, but I wonder how the frequent stops would factor in? Also if you didn't put your phone into airplane mode, would being a passenger in a 737 double your rates when they clock you doing 150+mph at takeoff before you ascend above cell reception range?

I wonder how different roads will affect it? Much of my driving is done on twisty country roads with speeds varying from 30mph to 60mph. I'm guessing the app won't say much about things like my road position or anticipation. If I drive on the motorway it's just a case of stick it in 6th and rumble along at 70mph and 2200rpm in a straightish line for the day, with breaks every two hours. I could be sitting there reading a book or posting on slashdot - whoops, had to change lanes for that lorry there - an

I've found that the single-spoke steering wheel on my CX (looks like this [gawkerassets.com], from this article [jalopnik.com]) make a perfect laptop stand. Since the steering wheel is practically locked solid above 70mph it doesn't even slide about when you're driving on the motorway.

they don't necessarily have to gouge you, just not give you a perceived discount you could potentially have received. If they can get people to switch to them with this gimmick and then deny them the discount but still charge a comparable rate, many would still stick with them because they're too busy to worry about car insurance shopping...

Drive sensibly while you're running the app, drive like a nutter when you're not.

On a more serious note, if this ran *all the time* then it may provide useful metrics on driver ability without the privacy concerns of GPS tracking. Yes, you could *theoretically* estimate someone's position from the accelerometer data - that is, after all, how Intertial Navigation Systems work - but it wouldn't be very accurate. You could estimate someone's position from cell handoff too, if you included that in the data, but then you'd have to be *trying* to be creepy;-)

One of the companies I work with installs GPS trackers in vehicles for things like lorries, heavy plant and such. Their system has an option for an accelerometer that will beep if the drivier is accelerating too quickly, and thus wasting a lot of fuel. One biggish fleet has apparently saved about 1 million Euros on diesel alone using this, never mind tyres and repairs.

this could be fun convincing them they have bugs in their system, since accelerometer should still record rapid vertical acceleration but that wouldn't translate to much change of latitude/longitude in gps... think "tower drop" carnival rides, bungee jumping, fast elevators, etc...

How long before the insurance company succumbs to the temptation of penalizing those who use their cars too much? The more time you spend on the road the higher the chance that you'll be involved in an incident, regardless of how well you drive. You can see how such information could be used to discriminate against people living in rural areas and those living further from their place of work.

How long before the insurance company succumbs to the temptation of penalizing those who use their cars too much? The more time you spend on the road the higher the chance that you'll be involved in an incident, regardless of how well you drive. You can see how such information could be used to discriminate against people living in rural areas and those living further from their place of work.

I thought insurance companies already do this. Every company I've had a policy with has always wanted current and yearly mileage when I signed up. Driving fewer miles in a year resulted in lower premiums.

If you do more miles - all things being equal, you are more likely to have an accident - so it makes sense for the insurer to charge you more. The only reason they aren't doing it yet is they've not found a good way to measure it yet, I'm sure they are working on it though.

Presumably now you are going to complain about insurers "discriminating" against people who live on flood plains, in high risk crime areas and arsonists ?

all they really ask is do you drive your car for work or personal and how many miles do you drive in a year. Here's a quick hint: ANything over 8000 miles per year increases your rate. Tell them you work from home and you drive an average of 20 miles a week. Your rate will drop.

Letting them track you is like talking to a cop who's placed you under arrest... they might convince you that you're being given a chance to prove what an upstanding law abiding citizen you are, but in reality they're only looking for the incriminating parts to hold against you. Its the marketing folks jobs to come up with hypothetical situations where you can save money so you'll switch to their brand... its the bean counters and their lawyers jobs to see that you don't ever actually qualify for said hypothetical discounts, and you are giving them the ammo...

Progressive is already using a feature like this in the U.S. It's just not a smart phone app. It's actually a little box you put in your car. It's called Snapshot. [progressive.com] Not my kind of thing. There is just no way for the insurance company to know what is or is not going on around you when you're driving.

There is just no way for the insurance company to know what is or is not going on around you when you're driving.

Aviva employs some of the best actuaries in the world - don't you think that they are capable of developing statistical models that take rare incidents into account? One swerve in thousands of miles of driving is going to appear as noise, a fast turn with hard acceleration on every corner is going to appear as a substantial crash risk.

So I have to drive carefully for 200 miles to get my rating up and then I can turn it off and go back to my old habits? Or just swap phones with my mum for 200 miles? Or just not take my (primary) phone when I want to have some fun?

For years insurance companies have been doing the exact same thing of estimating how good or bad a driver you are based on your age, gender, occupation etc. Now they're proposing to allow you to determine how good a driver you are based on using an app for not too long of a time really.

Is there a potential for it to be misused, yeah, but I'd welcome any move to judge my driving over lumping me in with a particular age group or gender.

Well first of all I will take issue with your math, if you're doing a 48 mile round trip, you will cover 192 miles within the first 4 days, so you would only be monitored for 8 miles on the Friday and then how would they have any idea what your weekend journeys are?

Second, could they not roughly work out the same information from your mileage in a year?

From what I can see, they are proposing to move away from the model of generalisations, which for me, a young male driver, is welcome news. A girl I kn

Sounds like malignant nonsense. And I hope people don't accept it, else we might soon need smartphones to obtain drivers-licenses. Insurance companies, although happily masquerading as safety-options, are mafia in disguise. They have purchased their way into government and become mandatory by force, compelling people to pay for protection whether they want it or not. Of course drivers need protection from the irresponsible or even honest accidents (collisions) of others, but with such a huge amount of them

Slippery Slope indeed! I don't see the govt requiring smartphone monitoring for the license (unless they just make it a part of "citizenship"), but I could easily see the 200 mile "trial period" being extended indefinitely so that you always had to be monitored to get discount, which like all the 1 sided contracts coporations push can be changed at any time, meaning any action they disapprove of could invalidate the "discount". And of course this would eventually morph into always be monitored to have a pol

The idea to customize insurance up to individual profiles is completely opposite to the very first idea of the insurance itself which is a way to share a risk within a large pool of fellows in order to distribute the cost. If you start building precise profiles of individuals and charge them accordingly, you defeat the idea behind the insurance. At term, you will charge the whole risk to each individual and they will no longer see advantages to insure themselves. Insurance is about sharing a risk over the l

The idea to customize insurance up to individual profiles is completely opposite to the very first idea of the insurance itself which is a way to share a risk within a large pool of fellows in order to distribute the cost.

Why do you think this? That happens to be the primary implementation in consumer markets due to the difficulty of accurately assessing individual risk, but it's also possible to go to an insurance company and get a very individualised tailored policy covering something nobody else on the planet has - e.g. a supermodel's legs.

Insurance is about sharing a risk over the largest population possible.

No. Insurance is about offsetting a risk. Sharing it over a large population is often a more efficient mechanism, but far from essential.

The modern world is based on statistics and conforming to expectations, whether that's an aptitude test determining what you're "probably" good at to some crude metrics determining whether you're "probably" a safe driver. Everyone is fitted into neat little categories and self-fulfilling prophecies are created, reinforcing existing prejudices and providing little scope for social improvement.

No more is this true than with driving: young men are essentially told that they are high risk. It's like the classic

In Spain, MAPFRE has been offering for at least 4 years the YCar line of insurance for young drivers which offers as much as a 40% discount if you install a GPS-like device which sends them information about when you drive, what speed you drive, how many kilometers, etc.

The reality is that everybody thinks they are above average driver. So if they get a score that is below average, they know they will pay more to offset the drivers who pay less. So they simply walk away. So ultimately exactly half of the drivers would get a worse deal in a perfect world. The insurance company will end up with better than average drivers only... but these drivers will pay less insurance. The insurance company pays out less but earns less per driver. That is a one to one relationship, so th

I think you are partially right. I’ll presume that when the insurance company manages to rid itself of the bottom half of its driver pool, its payouts decrease more than its collected premiums. In effect, the insurance company is defecting against its competitors by sticking them with the higher cost customers.

you are neglecting to consider that the reduction in rate would be less than the reduction in frequency and magnitude of payouts. it certainly would be, that is how insurance companies make their money